Blue Skies and Yellow Suns
by littledarkangelhippie
Summary: He says he likes the blue of her eyes more than the blue of the skies, and that the yellow of her hair is more lovely to him than that of the sun... She wishes she is strong enough to tell him that she likes that. (Annie and Bertholdt.)


**A.N.****: Okay, so I posted this earlier, but the source material I used happened to inspire another story for me to write, so I decided change this.**

**Warning****: Mature content.**

**Disclaimer****: I do not own **_**Shingeki no Kyojin**_**.**

She wakes up with sheets of warmth falling across her body like feathers of morning birds. Her muscles are filled with something smooth and pleasant and unfamiliar, her lips bruised by something sweet and unfathomable. An ache is wrenching at her chest and a strange feeling pools within her stomach like ice against wet skin—it stings like no other.

She wakes knowing nothing will ever be the same.

There is frost coating the window to her left, where she faces when things begin to shift and sink around her delicately. There is movement, she sees, against the glass. Rain too thick to be rain. Snow too watery to be snow. Streaking down the panes, unsmooth, jagged, in shapes she tries and fails to follow with her eyes.

She wakes knowing she is not alone.

The feeling is strange and alien to her and she feels out of place, out of sorts, out of time, and it bites around her heart so sharply she sucks in air to breathe—air too cold and too stale and yet too warm and too humid.

The feeling, she knows, does not belong.

~~...~~X~~...~~

His eyes are the color of olives, a vague green that borders on brown some days—some days, when the remorse twists too hard inside of him. His skin is the color of dirt, powdery brown and smooth and entirely unlike anything she'd ever seen before. It beckons a hunger within her she does not understand some days, which begs her to drag her tongue across his throat, to see if he tastes like the cocoa the nobles drink during winter sometimes.

There is something sad in his eyes, a pleading, apologetic look in them that wraps around her throat so tight she hisses at him to _stop looking at me like that_, and the way his lips pull down, the way his gaze flickers away, is enough to form a lump in her throat that makes her breathing _that _much more difficult.

She wants to tell him she doesn't mean it.

When she catches him sitting alone in the bunkers, regretting the sadness and pain he may have inflicted on someone else some vague time ago, she stomps over to him—a tornado of anger and passion and hatred; a hurricane of destruction and chaos; a harbinger of pain and agony—locks her hands about his face and pulls him down and forward to latch her mouth onto his.

She kisses him. Hard.

Her lips force his open and her tongue snaps into his mouth—the sounds he makes forces a pulsing between her legs that makes her drag him closer toward her. When his hands wrap around her narrow waist, she snatches away from him quickly, as if he had burned her.

Perhaps he had.

She will not admit that she likes the way his mouth tastes or that she likes how gentle his gaze is. The pink painting his soft brown skin is alluring in ways she will not succumb to; the spit shining his lips is inviting in ways she does not want to submit to.

Something inside of her wants to fuck him into the bed until he screams her name so loud she loses her entire world all at once.

The other part wants to run away so fast he'll never catch her again.

~~...~~X~~...~~

He says he likes the blue of her eyes more than the blue of the skies, and that the yellow of her hair is more lovely to him than that of the sun, and that, if he had to choose what he liked best between heaven and earth alike, he would say _you, Annie_.

She wishes she is strong enough to tell him how much she likes that, but her brow only furrows and her eyes only narrow and the only thing she says with a snarl of her lips is _shut up_. And he, miracle of all miracles, only smiles his bashful smile and does as she says.

She wishes she is strong enough to tell him how much it hurts her.

He prefers to sit beside her above anyone else, when they're gathered around for dinner and they're laughing and joking and telling stories. His arm brushes her every now and then as they eat and she wonders if it is on purpose—from the look that he gives her, a shy glance in her direction, she supposes it is. But she does not stop him from doing it.

When he presses his lips against her cheek, just before they part to go their separate ways for the night, she wants to tell him how much she wishes it was her lips instead—she wants to tell him that they are not children anymore, that things could go a few steps or leaps forward if they so want it to. But his warm lips brush her cool cheek nonetheless, and he pulls away far too quick for her to act. A small smile, a whispered _goodnight, Annie_, and he's gone, off to his bunk with his fellow male squad members.

She dreams of his lips trailing down her body, of his hands finding the ends of places she only thinks about when he's with her, of his fingers sliding deep into the pulsing depths of her core, which only scorches so when he's near her. She dreams of more than just kisses on the cheek and quick, stolen pecks behind storage rooms.

~~...~~X~~...~~

It is summer when she pulls him down onto her for the first time, in the middle of a field of overgrown grass with the sun bright over his broad shoulders. He is nervous and confused and mumbles half-honest protests against her lips as she yanks him close to her.

He is tall, yes. Too tall sometimes. She cannot stand on the tips of her toes and reach him—he has to lean and bend and contort himself down enough for her. And he is large, much larger than she is, and so it takes her entire body to hold him—and if he weren't so submissive to her, it might've even taken more. Her legs wrap tight around his middle and her arms lock around his neck, pressing herself along him.

He gives in almost too easily.

It is surprising to be able to feel the muscle beneath his thin gray shirt; the hard, lean edges of his waist against her inner thighs; the little dips and stiff curves of his ribs and abdomen against her stomach; the expanse of his chest against her small breasts.

Almost as surprising is the wave of desire, hot and relentless, growing there in her gut, thrumming between her legs—she wonders if he feels the heat against his stomach, or if he just assumes the midday heat is getting to her.

The kiss is clumsy and broken. His arms cage her beneath him and she feels her hips begin to grind—he might've smiled had he been the kind, but he only gives a short gasp, right into her mouth. Her head tilts back against the ground, and his tongue, _oh_, his tongue glides so smooth along hers she thinks the sky will fall right onto them. And when he shifts, sliding his long body up along hers, she feels him, _there_, pressed into her thigh, _hard_.

He breaks the kiss when she moans.

She won't admit how much she wants it, how much she hates him for untangling himself from her, mumbling some half-heard apology and putting as much distance between them without actually leaving her side. She won't admit that the wetness between her legs is meant for him—_him, _that part of him that he's hiding beneath his large hands—nor will she say just how deep the ache goes.

~~...~~X~~...~~

When they go out on missions, she does not look at him.

She is afraid, somewhere inside of her, that he will not make it back to her. Her mind is strung up on the worry ceaselessly, twirling itself into great big masses of enigmas better left unsolved and unvisited. It is there while she fights, blades whistling through the air and slicing trenches into thick, pink flesh; watching steam roll off wounds hidden from concerned teammates and planning facial expressions down to the very last tic of her features. She is afraid he will not smile at her again.

Every scream has her whirling around, every shout has her flinching—it is breaking her apart bit by bit until she cannot breathe and she feels, perhaps, he is entirely to blame.

And yet she does not blame him.

When he passes her on the way to another kill, he brushes against her purposefully—as if he _fucking _knows what's she's thinking—and it alleviates some tension from her mind, slips the anxiety from her shoulders for the moment. When he looks at her, his eyes say a dozen things more than his mouth, a voiceless _I'm here, Annie, don't worry_, and she wishes he'd stop trying to comfort her. Every second spent fretting over her is another lost.

Except. Except he's okay and her heart is pounding so hard she wants to laugh _just _a little.

When they go out on missions, they are never together. They are separated and that, to Annie, says more than it probably should. For split seconds at a time, flinging her body into the air and spinning the blades across flesh like dandelion seeds in the breeze, she thinks maybe they aren't supposed to be together—and everyone else but them knows it.

He is somewhere alone, the docile and sorrowful person he is, and he could never possibly survive on his own. The fear of it churns through her mind, quakes through her soul as harshly as buildings crumbling to the ground, and she cannot breathe for a very long moment. And he, she knows, is entirely to blame. And yet she, for some inexplicable reason, does not blame him.

~~...~~X~~...~~

It is early autumn and the leaves are yellowing around them. The forest is alive with chirping birds and tittering critters, and the crinkles and crunches beneath their feet keeps them occupied enough before they realize they're much further into the forest than their companions. Apples are ripe for the picking now, and the best trees frame the outside of the forest more than the inside, but they are venturous enough to try—or _stupid_, if anything their clowning comrade says is ever true.

It is then, as he reaches up to pick a reddened leaf from a lower branch, that she decides she likes the way he looks during fall—the soft earthy hues around him, the tiny curve at the edges of his lips, the way his green eyes look greener. The crisp sound of the leaves crumpling beneath her boots draws his attention, and he turns to look down at her, gaze gentle and warm and utterly caring.

She stops a foot away, tilting her head back to look up at him. The sunlight streaming down around him is golden, and for a moment he looks unworldly, ethereal, unreachable. The panic raises to her throat and she nearly drowns within it.

Her hands grasp at the front of his shirt, and she pulls and she tugs and she urges him down to her quickly—he bows and bends and gives in to her as easily as wind breaking over stone, and that comparison scares her because _she _is as unfeeling as a stone and he shouldn't have to deal with that—and her mouth, it begs _kiss me_, and he relents so _quickly_ she feels as if there's some kind of punchline waiting to hit her right in the stomach.

As if she can lose him at any moment.

She wishes she is taller, so she can keep him there forever without tiring his muscles too much. She wishes she is stronger, so she can tell him how much it hurts to be so near him.

His lips sear into hers, hot enough she thinks they'll wither and blacken under his touch, and his tongue is hesitant and slow and it flicks across her lower lip so tenderly a part of her snaps beneath it immediately. When her hands begin to slide under his shirt—where his skin is blistering and silken and the muscles are hard and deliciously trembling—he catches her wrists and pulls away, straightening to his full height and taking a full step back, which is three full paces for her short strides. Too far away.

He smiles very gently—the pink on his cheeks is alluring and the way his lips shine, how his tongue swipes across them fleetingly, makes her shake from her very core.

~~...~~X~~...~~

His squad is relocated further away. She figures this is another sign they are not meant to be, brought down by the heavens to tell them _stop, before shit hits the fan_. When she says this, his smile is wider than she's ever seen it, and his eyes are bright with laughter, although it never entirely erupts from within his chest.

He merely presses a kiss against her temple and mumbles a sweet little poem into her hair, something about how her hair reminds him of golden wheat and her eyes remind him of jewels.

She wishes she can tell him to shut up, but his fingers have wrapped around hers and her breath is leaving her so quickly her world spins on its axis a few times more than it should.

She wants to tell him about her dreams. How they spin such lies within her mind, like silvery webs or tiny cocoons threaded up along the inside of her head. How they envelope the outer edges of her sanity like layers of dust upon forgotten keepsakes. She wants to tell him that he, in her fantasies, will cross the boundaries between them as easily as if they didn't exist. That he, in her unspoken wants, will melt her down to a whimpering heap of vulnerability she hadn't known she could be. That he, in all of her wildest desires, will break her into pieces over and over and over again before she can even breathe a word in protest.

And she wants to tell him how much she's glad that isn't the reality, how scared she'd be to face her fears all at once, how terrifying the thought of him taking everything they'd ever built up and throwing it all away in a single swoop is. How she wakes up more petrified than excited.

Somehow, when she feels his fingers stop just shy of hers, as if he's afraid of breaking some rule, overlooking some line, trespassing on her comfort zone, she thinks he knows.

He tells her softly, as if in secret, that he often dreams of her with him. And before she can possibly think to hiss some insult at him—_pervert_, _creep_; any of those words that would never fit him in a million years—he describes a single scene, a picture painted out of his words smoothly, ink across glass or a blade against flesh.

Her, laughing, holding his hand in hers, with the sun falling like rain upon her milky skin. Her yellow hair undone, flowing down to her shoulders and her blue eyes shining up at him. She isn't wearing a dress, _mind you_, but she doesn't _need_ to to look so beautiful.

Her breath catches.

His eyes flash.

He whispers it again and again into her ear, cradling her into him carefully.

_You're beautiful, Annie_.

~~...~~X~~...~~

When she visits him, he smiles so bright his face lights up—she swears he is most handsome this way. And when she tells him that, with her serious expression and all, there is the slightest tinging of pink on his face, and he stutters a tiny _thank you_ under his breath.

Their friends, she knows, are watching them closely. They grin mischievously behind their hands whenever she thinks to look over, and their snickers reach her even where she stands. But this isn't what bothers her most, although she feels her eyebrow twitch irritably when it goes on longer than necessary.

What bothers her more—more of a silent, brooding irk that slithers beneath the surface—is the symbol at his arms, his chest, his back, which are different from hers. Her fingers reach up to trace the indentations, the patchwork, the tightly sewn needlework, the cloth meant as feathers, and a feeling sinks within her stomach. When he asks her what's wrong, she expresses her regret with apathetic, toneless words.

His eyes tell her he knows what she means even if she doesn't say it.

His room is one of the furthest down the corridor in their headquarters, and his bed is wide and long, to accommodate his monstrous height. The sheets are white and the blankets are blue and he keeps the shutters opened wide. When she enters, he is reluctant to shut the door, as she so kindly requests he do, and when she sits down at the end of his bed, a flustered look takes up his face, and he hurries to try to come up with excuses for them to leave.

_Too boring in here._

_It's nice outside._

_Wouldn't you like it better out there, Annie?_

She wants to tell him how much she wants him. How his skin color reminds her of the hot cocoa the nobles drink and how it seduces a fire in her that pleads for her to hold him down and taste every square centimeter of him she can reach. How she's dreamed of his fingers delving deep inside of her, where her core burns _just _for him, at the thought of him. How her heart slams into her ribs whenever she thinks of him, _anything _about him. Anything at all. How her hands long to touch him and how the ache inside of her has never ceased mangling her thoughts entirely.

She wants to tell him how much she wants his mouth on her, how much she thinks of his lips and his tongue and his voice, telling her, _You're beautiful_, and how much she wishes she can believe him. She wants to tell him all the times she's ever wanted him.

There are too many for her to count.

But she doesn't say a thing. Only stands and makes her way over to the door, and a sigh—not quite relief, not quite disappointment, but a rare mix of both—leaves him soundlessly. She promises, silently, that she will visit again soon.

~~...~~X~~...~~

They are heading on some mission tomorrow, and he visits her to say goodbye.

She is honest when she tells him _shut the fuck up_.

He, miracle of all miracles, smiles and does as she says.

She does not want to think about him, risking his life just because of their duties. She does not want to think about all the times she's ever worried about him, all the times she still worries about him, so far away now. She just wants to forget that she ever thought to care about him at all. She just wants to forget he ever existed at all.

But he brushes a kiss across her cheek, and he's pulling away too fast, and Annie is as practiced in these games as she is at war.

She hooks her leg around his, tugging him forward as she backs them into the nearest alleyway, where the shadows extend far enough to hide them from prying eyes. She wants him, and it hurts more than she'll ever admit; there is a second, a second too long, that he hesitates, before he yields to her force. As he always has and always will.

He bends and leans and contorts to fit her as well as he possibly can without ever slipping out of place—they have to stay together, they are useless without the other, and he knows this better than she does, so he slides down and hoists her up against the wall until they are, at last, level. Even.

His kiss will always undo her and this is a part of him that will haunt her forever if he does not make it back to her—one part of her tells her he will, and the other hisses he won't. His fingers curl around her throat, the curve of his thumb pressing along her pulse; her heart is pounding hard enough to shake her bones under her muscle and skin—she hopes he will not break the kiss this time.

She wants and she hungers and she desires for more, and her hands claw at his shirt and her tongue wrestles with his ravenously and she can _hear _the sounds he's making. Half pleading and half demanding.

It's strange he has the ability to sound like two contradicting things at the exact same time.

The moment her hands begin to drift across his collarbone, which mesmerize her in ways she's embarrassed to say, his mouth pulls away—she's ready, she thinks, to punch him in the jaw this time—but then he's looking at her, and his eyes are dark and dazed and make something hot shoot down her spine quickly. He bows his head to kiss her neck, and it kicks her mind into overdrive. She is gasping by the time his tongue finally flicks out to taste her skin, and the shaky breath that leaves him is the final tip of the scale for her.

She is too lost to realize it until it's too late. Her hands grasp at his shirt and pulls it up hastily—she _sees _him, she does, the lines on his stomach and chest; those muscles and dips and curves and the shadows pooling at every one, and every fiber of her being is dying to _touch—_but it's over before she realizes.

He detaches himself from her, unwraps her slender limbs from him and lowers her down to the ground carefully. The apologies pour out of him at a violent velocity and it clouds about her head for a moment too long. He is already backing away, urging her back into her dorms and slipping off into the night—once he makes sure she's safe, of course; always the gentleman—gone before she can even gather her wits to speak.

~~...~~X~~...~~

His squad is preoccupied with training with horses—or something along those lines. It is easy to hide in his room, undetected by others.

For a while, she stands there, awaiting his arrival, and then she begins to explore; boredom can only push a person so far, after all. His desk is only hardly used, and the papers atop are, from the looks of it, only used for letters and reports—she can tell by the parchment; the letters he writes her are of the same material—and his wardrobe only holds a scant amount of clothes. The shoe polisher is kept stored in the desk drawer and his inks are kept capped beside the paper. His nightstand only has a candle on it and a few books are stacked on the floor beside his bed. The bed itself has a comfortable mattress and the blankets smell clean and feel soft rubbed against the skin of her arm.

She's sitting in the center of the bed, moving to take off her jacket when the door opens; she pauses. He steps into the room, eyes downcast and face drawn in a tired expression. He shuts the door firmly and leans down to take off his boots—only when he finishes, kicking them aside, does he finally notice her.

He freezes.

She holds her arms out for him, a silent request for him to join her. A moment passes before he does, sitting down at the edge of the bed cautiously.

He does not understand why she's there—Annie will always be the kind to refrain from romantic acts, and showing up, unannounced, in a person's room like this could be considered quite—well, the thought stops there—because Annie's hand is trailing up his thigh.

She expects his hand to stop hers, as it always does in times like these, but his eyes watch it wordlessly for a minute, just before moving his gaze up to her face. Her hand skips over the remaining distance quickly, settling over and cupping him through his pants—he gasps and jumps and catches her wrist, his face flushing pink so _quickly—_and she latches her mouth onto his before he can push her away again.

She kisses him. Hard.

Her mouth is greedy for the taste of his, and the longer she spends muting his words right there with her tongue, the less he tries to stop her. The objections, the excuses and needless apologies, are lost in her kiss and he can't think of a single thing to say.

She extracts herself before it can move any further.

Her words are muffled for a second, just long enough for her to peel herself away and slip out of his door—a muttered promise in his ear.

_You won't get away next time_.

~~...~~X~~...~~

The next time she sees him, it is in the middle of the woods. She is annoyed of her new squad's antics, and he is only there by chance—gathering herbs it seems, and he is the only volunteer, because he, of course, will always be the most selfless out of everyone.

He blushes when he spots her and she recalls their last meeting almost fondly. She secretly finds it endearing he's been thinking about it.

She, out of some spontaneous act of relief, sprints over to him and jumps into his arms—partly because she knows it'll surprise him enough to make him drop his things and catch her and partly because she is completely prepared to exploit the fuck out of him and it makes it better that he doesn't know. True to his ever unselfish persona, he does indeed catch her. His long arms wind around her slender figure securely, holding her to him tightly—his body is strong and unyielding against hers, so unlike his personality—and she takes the opportunity to wrap her legs around his waist and curl her fists into his jacket.

It is a moment before he realizes this might not have been the smartest idea.

She manages to get him to sit against the trunk of a tree—_I promised you wouldn't get away, didn't I?—_and settles herself in his lap. The pink is permanently stained into his cheeks, but she can't find it in her to mind—it suits the soft powdery brown perfectly.

Her fingers comb through his hair, a color much like the pieces of chocolate she catches her roommate eating at night, tilting his head back. He is better at kissing than he used to be, not as uncertain and halting. He rolls his tongue inside of her mouth and follows her movements almost naturally, as if he can read her mind and has figured out the perfect way to respond. It is unnerving and surprising and utterly fascinating, feeling the heat of his breaths puff around her mouth as he turns his head the right way and pushes back just as firmly. His eyes are shut and he looks so relaxed she doesn't feel as guilty for dragging him into this without warning.

He is so completely focused on returning her kiss that he does not notice her fingers moving down his shirt—his hands are preoccupied; one cradling the back of her head and one resting on her hip—his lips do not pause even as she shifts and moves her hands up underneath. It isn't until her hands are—_finally, fuck—_on his skin that he comes to his senses.

"A—Annie," he stutters, pulling away, but she falls forward and locks their mouths back together. The little noise he makes in complaint dies out pretty quickly, hitching into one of surprise. His skin, she finds, is silken over the hard muscles, and they tremble and twitch and tighten under her touch. Soft, fine strands of hair trail down toward the waistband of his pants, and a very thin, cool sweat sheets his flesh. She is already intoxicated by the feel of him.

She wants more.

Her lips move across his jawline, and she feels it clench very slightly—his breaths come out in gasps now, catching when she begins a path of open-mouthed kisses down his throat; then, they begin to vaguely sound like her name. She wants to copy the patterns she's tracing with her fingertips with her tongue. She wants to nip and suck on every bit of flesh she can. She wants to do things to him that frighten her more than they could him. And when her hand moves down to rub his hardness against her inner thigh, his sounds become helpless moans and his hands grasp her hips, pulling her down against him, grinding up into her, giving into her touches.

_She wants more_.

A whistle in the distance ends all further progress. He remembers where they are and what they're doing and hurries to stand, helping her to her feet and fixing her rumpled clothes. Again, more apologies, more excuses, and he gathers his things back up again.

A last kiss on her lips, which lingers just long enough to make her knees weak, and he turns and runs away, following the whistling noise toward his squad.

~~...~~X~~...~~

She is frantic.

She yanks him into her room when he shows up, paying a friendly visit, and locks the door behind them. He has no time to speak before she is pushing him onto her bed—she curses his height when he nearly hits his head and has to twist himself onto his back to fit a little better. She is on top of him before he can ask a single thing, bending beneath the upper bunk.

The fact that she immediately begins to rock herself against him sets off an alarm inside of him, but he has no time to act upon it. She is rolling them over, pulling him over her smaller body. Her movements are panicked in ways that make his nerves tense to fraying ends.

He does not understand what she is doing.

The realization dawns on him when she takes his hand in hers and she immediately parts her legs and slides it down under the waistband of her pants—her button and zipper are already undone, he hadn't noticed that—and she guides his finger around and slides it into herself carefully—so quick he barely blinks and it is already there.

He does not know what to do.

She is tight around just one finger, and unbelievably wet, _dripping_ down into the palm of his hand, which is cupping her sex, where her soft curls brush against his palm and her heat wraps around his skin. The inside feels like satin, hot and _alive_, and he never knew that was how it would feel, otherwise he probably would've been worshiping her long before this.

He is not sure what brought this on.

Annie is scared. It feels much more different than she thought it would. _Good_—_God, yes—_but different. His finger is long and it feels so much better than hers ever could, but he is so close to her. Too close. His body bows over her, his weight supported on his elbow, rested just beside her head—caging her in, like that one day in the summer—shifted just a little to the side. His large hand is buried in her pants—and the color is hot against her vision, his warm tan and her cold pallor—and his eyes are locked between them, mouth agape and breathing deeply and face almost completely red. Something dark in his eyes, _hungry_, and she is scared.

She is scared of the feeling.

She grips his wrist and thrusts against his palm—he moans very faintly, and then his finger is moving, in and out, so slowly. She is fucking his hand before she can help it, before her sanity can reach her once again. She rolls up just as he pushes it in, and then a second finger joins in—she is frantically meeting every little movement. Her hands twist into the front of his shirt and her head falls back into her pillows, mouth opening in wordless cries and muted shrieks, slurring his name into something more like a lost plea for mercy. His mouth, she realizes, is sucking on her chest, taking advantage of the sleeveless shirt she wears for training.

She is falling.

He is grinding against her leg, his breaths ragged across her forehead. His fingers are twisting and pumping and curling inside of her in ways, she thinks, they shouldn't be able to—the feeling is too perfect to be coming from him, _dear God, please tell me this is a dream—_and it isn't long before, his mouth closing over hers and hips pressing down hard, that she falls apart completely under his touches. She flutters and tightens around his fingers, toes curling and chest heaving, shouts lost in his mouth before she could embarrass herself to everyone in the entire building.

She is a heap of bliss beneath him by the time she comes down, flickers of heat and pleasure and peace tickling across her body and thrumming at her center nicely. She holds her breath when he licks his fingers clean, and bites her lip when she sees how dark his eyes have gotten, how _hard _he is against her.

"Hey," she says, reaching over to return the favor.

He presses a kiss to the corner of her lips. "It's fine," he murmurs. "Rest"

The words shut her down—she blacks out from exhaustion.

~~...~~X~~...~~

She tells him she has wanted to fuck him into his bed ever since their first kiss.

He tells her, smiling, "I have, too, Annie."

Something warm blooms within her.

He makes her orgasm with his fingers a few more times before she finally convinces him to let her return the favor. He does not take off his pants and he pleads that she doesn't look—"It's embarrassing, Annie," he'd say—but he is long in her hand and hotter than all hell and he pulses deliciously in her grip. He teaches her how tight to hold him and how to stroke him _just right_, and he mumbles against her ear how she learned a little too quickly to be normal. She feels herself smile secretly. When he finishes, his hands pull harshly at the sheets and his teeth grit tight, and a growl of her name leaves him.

A sound, she finds, she likes very much.

They spend a lot of time in his room, alone, while his squad members are out and he's been ordered to watch the fort, which happens more often than not; she suspects he's volunteering on purpose now.

She likes it most when his mouth is on her, moving across the planes of her stomach, his fingers pumping deep inside of her. She silently pleads for things she wouldn't dare say out loud; perhaps the need for his mouth there where his fingers delved tenderly, to feel his tongue against the bundle of nerves demanding all of his attention.

He starts to take his shirt off more often, because she likes running her hands down his chest, because she keeps touching him at every chance she gets, slowly, hungrily—she still wants to lick every inch of him, if only he'd let her, but he never would.

He is too selfless for his own good.

She finds he is easier to manipulate when she finds the right grip around his length, that his resistance is only a faint mumble against her shoulder when she swipes a thumb across the tip. He bends to her will so easily she almost resents herself—but she cannot feel anymore hatred for herself as it is; it swirls darker at the pit of her stomach with every day that passes—and his thoughts, she realizes, are so obscured by the pleasure he hardly even raises a hand to stop her when she pushes him onto his back beneath her.

When his room is so dark she can barely make out his own face, and the rest of the fort is still and silent, he is so much less restrained. His groans are needy and pleading and he bucks up into her hand restlessly. She watches him then, how his chest heaves and the muscles in his stomach tightens, how his hands twist up into the sheets beneath him and his head falls back into his pillows, how his mouth opens up, how his noises reverberate in her ears—deep moans that sink imaginary claws into her spine and tears all the way through.

Shreds her apart.

He very nearly shouts when her tongue presses along the underside, when she engulfs him with her warm mouth. He has to stop himself from burying his length as far as he can down her throat—_can't_, _you can't do that to Annie, not Annie—_and his sounds are choked out of him when she sucks, so softly, at the head. Where she got the idea, he has no idea, but his body sings with joy and bliss and want, and he only barely holds himself together.

"_Annie_," he breathes, chancing a glance down very quickly—the sight is too much for him to take; her head bobbing, her soft pink lips wrapped around him, locks of sunny yellow tickling his hips very briefly when she takes a little more of him into her mouth.

She hums, a sound perhaps meant as a response, innocent and meaningless, and it snaps the last bits of his control and before he can think to warn her, he is unraveling beneath her. Fire rakes down through him and his voice is lost beneath its roar—his cry.

Something hits the back of her throat, something thick and hot, and she gags and nearly pulls away, but the taste streaks across her tongue and the realization dawns on her immediately—it is familiar, from those taken moments spent licking the stickiness from her fingers while he lays, panting and disjointed and relieved. She forces herself to swallow, salty and bitter and unpleasant as it is, and licks the residue from her lips and fingertips, wiping it off her chin.

He is more delirious than usual, breathless and tired and completely relaxed. When he comes back to his senses, quicker than she expects him to, he pushes himself up slowly, with only minor difficulty. She wonders, idly, if she would be just as muddled as he is if he ever decided to do the same for her. "I—I'm sorry, Annie," he mutters, hanging his head. "I...didn't mean to..."

She inclines her head, and the question is left unspoken. But he will always be able to read her easily.

It is a part of him she will never understand.

"To...finish...so soon," he explains.

Before he can continue his apology, she moves onto her knees, cradling his face in her small hands. Her forehead presses against his, a touch that feels somehow more intimate than anything that has passed between them—perhaps because her eyes are brimming with some unspoken emotion he cannot entirely comprehend.

"Don't apologize for something so stupid."

The words are harsh, but he knows what she means to say.

He smiles.

~~...~~X~~...~~

A soft little shriek leaves her when he dips his tongue inside of her for the first time, and the noise is enough to ease his worries out of his mind for the moment. His hands grip her thighs, spreading her legs for him, and his breath puffs over the delicate, sensitive flesh, faintly glistening with her desire. She has flushed to a pink he's learned means she is close—"C_lose, God, _make me come, already, _please_,"—and he reaches his fingers over to part the lips enough for his tongue to slide through, and she trembles and shakes and moans in elation and frustration at the very same time.

She tastes faintly sweet, like the honey he used to eat as a child or the peaches he picked once from some trees a while back. It coats his tongue and makes things slicker than he was accustomed to feeling. He feels her pulse along the sides and notes the delicate tightening he remembers around his fingers. She is smoother like this, and he likes the feeling as he laps the inner folds softly. She is whining, a high pitched, breathy sound coming from her throat that he has never heard before. He slips out his tongue and replaces it with two fingers immediately, searching along the top of her mound for the little button he'd found not too long ago.

When he does, he rolls his tongue across it, sucks very gently, presses the blunt edge of his canine along it, curling his fingers in that way he'd learned she likes so much.

This, he thinks, is so much better. He can see the tremors leading up to the end, wracking deep into her bones as she begins to tense and writhe and rise up toward him desperately. The juices spill out almost suddenly, if not for his attentiveness, and he licks and he laps and he suckles until every last drop is accounted for.

Her eyes, he thinks, burns hotter than any sun.

~~...~~X~~...~~

His fingers move timidly across her arm, as if afraid of some unspoken rule she has not set up yet. The touch is halting, hesitant, waiting for her to snap at him.

She wonders if she is so scary.

"I was thinking," she says, and it startles him enough to break the patterns he is beginning upon her shoulder.

"Of?" he mumbles, and his hand rests there around her elbow, carefully.

"I was thinking, maybe," she says, "I don't hate you as much as I used to."

In Annie language, he knows, that means she loves him.

He presses his lips against her ear, and a warmth spreads across her body from the contact alone. He whispers a poem into her hair, something about blue skies and yellow suns.

~~...~~X~~...~~

**A.N.****: A poem inspired this, originally, but this story ultimately swayed off the tone I was going for and it ended up not fitting at all. So, I'm going to write another story (Annie and Bertholdt, still) that actually fits the poem. I still hope you enjoy this, despite everything.**

**I'm not used to writing in this style, actually, so I'm not sure how I did. I _love _this pairing, so much, and I just _had_ to write something for them.**

**Anyway, tell me what you think! Review please!**


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